


Thankful

by luulapants



Series: Steter Modern Royalty AU [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Animal Death, Child Corey Bryant, Child Liam Dunbar, Child Malia Tate, Epilogue, Family Fluff, Fluff, Hunting, Kid Fic, M/M, Making Out, Married Couple, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25996846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luulapants/pseuds/luulapants
Summary: Epilogue to You Should See Me in a Crown.The Hale-Stilinski family prepares for Thanksgiving with friends at their new home in Colorado. Nothing but super indulgent feel-good fluff here.
Relationships: Allison Argent/Scott McCall, Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: Steter Modern Royalty AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1886839
Comments: 22
Kudos: 207





	Thankful

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bookaholic98](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bookaholic98/gifts).



> For my 400 followers giveaway, prompted by thebestbooksaround.

Stiles shut off the water and turned to the side, frowning at the bare handle of the stove. He pulled open a drawer and frowned at that, too. “Sorry, hang on, dude,” he said, and then called out, “Babe? Where the hell are all the dish towels?”

From down the hall, Peter called back, “Mrs. Sanchez is doing laundry!”

He huffed and wiped his hands on his jeans before turning back to the tablet, propped up on the kitchen counter. “You’re leaving on Monday, then?”

On the screen, Scott leaned back in his chair. “So, change of plans _again_. My mom decided to drive with us after all because – surprise, surprise – she doesn’t want to drive through the desert by herself. Which is what we _told her_ , like, two months ago, but whatever. Anyway, she’s got a day shift Monday, so we’re heading out Tuesday morning.”

“You’re not driving straight through, are you?” Stiles set to chopping the vegetables on the cutting board in front of the tablet.

“I want to,” Scott said.

In the background, a high-pitched yelling started, preceding a blurry little ball of color as it exploded onto the screen and over the arm of his chair. Scott let out an ‘oof’ and shifted Corey around on his lap. “Is Nunca Sti-ows?” he asked, scooting forward to get his face far too close to the screen. He had marker on his cheek.

“Hey, kiddo,” Stiles laughed. “How’s it going?”

“Chu make dinna?” Corey asked, dropping back against Scott’s chest and sticking his thumb in his mouth.

“Yep,” Stiles agreed.

“Anyway,” Scott continued, “I want to, but Allison doesn’t think the kids could manage it, even with my mom helping to keep the peace, so we’re going to stop in Salt Lake City Tuesday night, and we’ll get in Wednesday sometime in the afternoon, probably.”

“Hey!” said Corey, as if suddenly remembering very important news. “Hey, Wiam got a bike.”

Scott petted Corey’s hair and laughed. “Liam crashed his old one pretty spectacularly on the hill down the block, so we had to replace it.”

“Oh, man,” Stiles said, grinning. He dumped the chopped brussels sprouts into a bowl. “You know, we don’t have very good roads for biking out here, Cor, but I bet Malia will show you the horses when you’re here.”

Corey’s eyes went wide in wonder. “Howses?”

From somewhere off-screen, Stiles could hear Liam screaming, “MOM! He’s down here!” His head poked over the side of the video. “Corey’s s’posed to be getting a bath. Hi, Uncle Stiles.”

“NOOOOOO!” Corey wailed.

Allison came up behind Scott’s chair, looking frazzled. “Hey, Stiles! Can’t wait to see you all. Sorry, I’ve got to steal this one.”

“DON’ WANNA BAF!”

Scott, resigned to the chaos that was his life, lifted the screaming toddler up for Allison to grab. He got kicked in the side of the head and didn’t even seem to notice.

Liam draped himself over the arm of the chair as the sound of screaming drifted into the distance. “Where’s Malia?” he asked.

“Oh! You’ll like this,” Stiles replied. “Malia and their grandpa are out getting our Thanksgiving turkey.”

Scott lifted an eyebrow. “‘Getting’?”

Stiles heard footsteps on the tile behind him. Peter’s voice amended, “Killing. They’re turkey hunting.”

Liam’s mouth dropped open. “Woahhh!” He turned to Scott. “How come I can’t kill a turkey?”

Scott shot Stiles and Peter a little glare. “Well, Malia’s older than you. Maybe when you’re twelve, we can go out early and you can help.”

Groaning and rolling his eyes with as much drama as he could muster, Liam pushed away and out of the frame.

“Hey! Say goodbye before you walk away!” Scott called.

Half of Liam’s face appeared. “Bye, Uncle Stiles. Bye, Uncle Peter.”

“You’ve got your hands full,” Peter commented. He wrapped a hand around Stiles’s waist, chin hooked over his shoulder.

Scott nodded. “Yeah, you remember that whole ‘two or three’ thing? Yeah, forget that. Three...” He laughed almost maniacally. “Oh my god. No. Absolutely not.”

Stiles poured some oil over the sprouts and started pulling spices down from the cabinet. “Alright, buddy. Go help your beautiful wife wrangle your children. We’ll see you Wednesday. Call us when you’re on the road, alright?”

“You got it,” Scott agreed. “Bye, Peter. See you Wednesday."

Peter reached around Stiles to end the call, then pressed a kiss to the side of his throat.

“Are you here to help or are you here to mack on me while I try to cook?” Stiles teased.

“Hmm… I think I’m just here to mack.” Peter’s other hand slid up to grab his butt.

Stiles leaned back and nipped at Peter’s jaw. “If you chop the onions for me, we’ll have time to make out before they get back.”

Heaving a dutiful sigh, Peter pulled away and grabbed the onions off the counter. “Fine. You’ve convinced me.”

Once the vegetables were in the oven, the two of them went to the screened-in back porch. It was, without question, Stiles’s favorite part of the house. The back of the property sloped down into a wooded valley, criss-crossed by creeks that grew swollen this time of year. It was a fair hike, but they could walk to the new vineyard from the back of the property, only having to cut across the edges of the land of two friendly neighbors. From this vantage, they couldn’t see the vineyard itself, only the dip in tree cover at the foot of the mountains that rose up beyond it. Beetle kill had taken out a lot of the lodgepole pines a decade before they bought the house, but the forests were coming back, greenery filling back in and scaling the sides of the mountains into the distance.

Stiles went to the screen and gazed out. “Just think,” he murmured. “Somewhere out there, our child is probably mauling a turkey to death.”

Peter laughed, hooked two fingers into Stiles’s back belt loop, and tugged him to the couch. “Let’s hope they leave enough for us to cook, hmm?”

Falling back onto his husband’s lap on the couch, Stiles squirmed around until he was lying on top of Peter, stretched out with legs tangled together. He bumped their noses together. “Hey, handsome.”

“I think I was promised a make out session,” Peter reminded him, grabbing two handfuls of Stiles’s butt. He ducked his head to catch Stiles’s lips, tongue slipping in easily, sweetly. They started out slow and lazy like that, just lying together and tasting one another. When the angle of their necks grew too uncomfortable, Stiles climbed up to straddle Peter’s waist, wriggling his ass even though he knew they probably wouldn’t have time for much more than this.

Regardless, he wasn’t surprised to feel Peter’s hand slipping down the back of his pants.

Stiles grinned, his teeth getting in the way of the kiss. “You’re not planning on getting me worked up and leaving me high and dry, are you?”

“I would never,” Peter replied, feigning offense.

“We can stay up late tonight,” Stiles murmured, squirming as Peter’s hand drifted lower. “We’re on vacation.”

Peter ducked his head and kissed Stiles’s neck. “Mmm, and what would we do, staying up late?” Stiles opened his mouth to answer, but Peter’s hand retreated from his pants suddenly, groaning.

“They’re on their way back?”

“Mhm,” Peter muttered, looking thoroughly put out.

Stiles sighed and got to his feet, tugging Peter up after him. “Come on, let’s see what they managed to wrangle.”

They went to the screen to look out over the property in the direction of the vineyard. There, tiny specks in the distance, he saw two figures step through the treeline onto the slope up to the house.

“Is that the turkey?” Stiles asked, squinting to try to see what Malia had stretched over their shoulders. “That’s too big. Did they get two?”

Peter stood at his side squinting as well until, suddenly, he broke into a loud laugh. He spoke loud enough to be heard down the slope, “I thought you were turkey hunting.”

As they came farther up the slope, Stiles finally saw what Peter had already made out: a deer, a doe, stretched across Malia’s skinny shoulders, its legs clasped in their hands and head lolling behind them. Stiles’s dad looked up toward the house and held his hands out as if to say, _Not my fault!_

“Oh my god,” Stiles snickered, a hand over his mouth. “Mrs. Sanchez is going to kill us. Do we even know how to prepare a deer?”

“Your dad probably knows,” Peter offered. “He’s the hunting buff.”

“Are we even allowed to have that thing?” Stiles pressed. “We got them a license for _turkey hunting_.”

Peter waved a hand. “If they killed it with claws and teeth, it’s covered under heritage hunting laws.”

Once Malia and Stiles’s dad got close enough to the house, Stiles and Peter went down the steps off the porch and into the yard. Stiles held his hands out wide. “ _Why?_ ” he laughed.

Malia jogged the last few yards, looking a little winded from such a long hike with such a heavy weight on their shoulders. They heaved the deer over their head and onto the grass in front of their dads. Its throat had clearly been taken out by teeth. “This is way better than turkey!” they insisted.

Stiles covered his face, shoulders shaking in laughter.

Peter put his hands on his hips and lifted an eyebrow at the sheriff. “What prompted this?”

Noah gestured at the deer. “She got into the fence at the vineyard. Manny was saying they were going to have to either have fish and wildlife come remove her or go through the headache of getting a license, so we volunteered to take care of her for them. Malia used claws, so it’s completely legal.”

Stiles peeked over his hands at Malia, who had clearly wiped their bloody face off on their flannel shirt. They still had a smear of it on their jaw. “Okay, okay. Go get cleaned up, you ridiculous feral child. Dad, you are _so_ in charge of the skinning and carving and whatever the hell else has to happen to get this ready for Mrs. Sanchez.”

“Hey, I wanna help!” Malia insisted.

“They want to help,” Noah repeated, nearly as childish as his grandchild.

Stiles turned to Peter, who was just standing there, hands tucked into his pockets, smiling serenely as if he felt fully assured that, no matter what, none of this would be _his_ problem. “They want to help,” Peter agreed.

Stiles gaped at the ridiculous lot of them, then tossed his hands in the air in defeat. “Fine! Go get blood and guts all over yourself.” He jabbed a finger at Malia. “You’re doing your own load of laundry, though, buddy. You are _not_ making Mrs. Sanchez deal with that crap.”

Malia gave him a salute and a stern nod. “Sir, yes, sir.”

* * *

  
  


“I dun’ wike benshun,” Corey whined.

“ _Ven-i-son_ ,” Malia corrected, cutting the meat into little pieces on his plate. “And, yes, you do. Come on, I caught this deer all by myself.”

“ _I_ like venison,” Liam insisted. He liked anything that Malia liked, as a rule.

“You haven’t even tried it yet,” Allison laughed. “Now, stop fussing. It’s time for thanks.”

“Fanks,” said Corey.

Noah laughed. “Alright, Allison, how about you start us off?”

She folded her hands on the table in front of her and cast her eyes to Scott at her side. “I am thankful that we had a safe drive, and that we were all able to be together for Thanksgiving this year.”

Scott picked up with, “And I’m thankful that my mom could finally get time off to come with us.” He turned to Liam and nudged him with an elbow.

“Um...” He stared around the table, wide-eyed in the metaphorical spotlight. “I’m thankful, um, I’m thankful I can see Malia.”

“I’m thankful for _deer_ ,” Malia said with a grin.

“Corey, do you have something you’re thankful for?” Melissa probed gently.

“Ummm yeah.” He stared around at them, apparently finding this to be a satisfactory statement.

Melissa laughed. “Well, I am also thankful for getting the time off, but mostly I’m thankful for good hiking weather. Noah, you promised me we were going to get up that mountain by the vineyard this year.” She waggled a finger at him.

Noah shook his head. “Fine, fine. I’m thankful for friends and family that force me to exercise instead of languishing in my retirement.”

Peter didn’t speak up immediately, and Stiles turned to study the soft emotion crossing his face. Finally, he said, “I’m so thankful. For all of you. For being able to build a family, to find a family that’s so... accepting and loving.” He ducked his head, a little shy at having gone sappy. “I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

Stiles wrapped an arm around his husband’s shoulders, tugging him sideways to press a kiss to his cheek. Warm, comforting smells wafted up from the table. Around them, candlelight flickered across soft, affectionate expressions. Across the table from them, the night had gone dark, and a cascade of stars spilled out between the shadows of the mountains, arcing up, up and out of sight.

“All of it,” he said. “I’m thankful for all of it.”


End file.
